Chapter 8: Three of Four Sisters

Ah. As I was saying, Dick had four sisters. Three were older than him.

First came Petra and Susan. When I was born, Dick was sixteen and Petra and Susan already had almost a full decade on him. They weren't twins--Petra was a year older--but I find it impossible to think of either on her own. Together, they have being, but separately they fade into ghostly impalpability. Physically speaking, both took after their mother. Which is to say both were big strapping Dutch girls that were not much to look at. It wasn't that they were ugly, or even butch. I don't think either were frustrated dykes. Both had faces that when you looked closely enough turned out to be equipped with moderately pretty features. It was precisely that you had to look closely enough. Otherwise what appeared framed under their cropped blond heads of hair were irremediably fuzzy visages.

If Father and Mother Scholten hoped that Petra would be the rock upon which the transplanted-Scholtens-of-the-plains would continue on into the next generation, this hope would ultimately prove thwarted. Last I heard Petra didn't marry until she was forty and the one boychild she saw into the world turned out severely autistic. Susan never did marry. She seemed always to be dating but for some reason I can't help thinking that wherever she is in the world today she carries her hymen with her intact.

I don't know. Maybe it was just their square bodies and small droopy breasts. Even I tended to avoid their legs to hump and I was always rather indiscriminate. Undoubtedly, I've just outed myself as a sexist. Perhaps what I long for most in my hypothetical reader is that one withering glance that will justly dismiss me as irrelevant forever.

But I hope no too cruel words will spill out of me for Willy, the youngest, Dick's baby sister, Wilhemina. She was born with osteogenesis imperfecta, otherwise known as Brittle Bone Disease. By the time I left the farm, two years after I was born, when I was fourteen, Willy had undergone at least four hip operations. Pins inserted, pins removed, pins replaced. She seemed almost always to be on crutches or else in a wheelchair. Scholten Sr. doted on her. He always looked at her in a way that suggested he was personally responsible for her condition. As if God crippled her to punish him for some unspecified and unspeakable sin. Or maybe he felt guilty simply because she was so utterly isolated in her pain. In any case, Willy seemed the only child that could bring out the parent in the hardened old farmer.

Dick was a good brother to her. He instinctively knew when to help Willy and when to let her help herself. He showed no guilt around her because he felt none and had none. Not about her. It wasn't that he was trying, but he was just always around whenever she needed him. And he strangely shared her passion for entertainment gossip. I'd often lie at their feet in the evenings as they watched Mary Hart report Hollywood's latest marriage or latest divorce. As for Petra and Susan, Dick had a kind and decorous respect for them that never deepened into anything more than mild interest in their lives and persons. As far as I could tell this did not bother either of them at all. In the end it seemed everyone in the family paired off: Petra with Susan, Willy with Scholten Sr., Mrs. Scholten with God,...

and Dick with Anika.